You are looking live at the dance team’s rehearsal for tonight’s football game. The gals, pictured wearing pink, because it’s October, are going to do Thriller tonight, also because it’s October. My longstanding belief is everything TCU does is pretty cool — marketing, media guides, uniforms, helmets with frogs shooting blood out of their eyes, formations (!), so on and so forth — so hopes are high, even though my head will be down and I’ll be writing and it’s possible I miss it.

But it’s Thriller. Thriller.

Also, it’a blackout tonight, which is not to be confused with Game 1 of the World Series.

https://twitter.com/TCU_Athletics/status/658646400364859392

Hopes are also high among the viewers that this will be a close, competitive and ideally offensive game tonight and the Fox Sports 1 audience will be entertained by another WVU-TCU meeting. I don’t know if that happens, but I do know this: You need to score points to win this one.

Trenchant.

In 20 Big 12 games this season, 18 have had a team score at least 30 points and six have seen both teams score 30 or more. WVU has hit 30 just once in three Big 12 games and allow me pin the * next to the final score at Baylor. The only two games without either team scoring 30 points involved Texas, which beat Oklahoma and Kansas State.

WVU’s averaging 29.6 points per game in Big 12 play — sixth place among the 10 teams, 9.9 points behind fifth-place Oklahoma State and 21.2 points behind second-place TCU — and that’s inflated by the Hefty Cinch Sak scores against the Bears. They count, and yet the Mountaineers are still under 30 points per game, and that’s a terrible place to be in the Big 12 and territory WVU was just not supposed to occupy in the past.

Since 2001, when West Virginia hired the offensive coordinator from Clemson and Rich Rodriguez accelerated heartbeats with promises of offenses that didn’t huddle and instead set hair on fire, the Mountaineers are 91-13 when they score at least 30 points.

He can take credit for much of that success, winning the first 33 times his offense scored 30 points and finishing 47-1 during such games in his seven seasons.

That sort of stuff began to matter, and his successor was Bill Stewart, who reached 30 points five times in his first season and then in the first five games in 2009. He stockpiled substance with 18 wins and a bowl victory his first two seasons, but the style was in short supply.

There were no more 30-point games to finish the 2009 season, and the athletic director decided to make a change in the middle of the 2010 schedule. The Mountaineers hit 30 points three times in the first five games that year before a stretch of 20, 14 and 13 points had Oliver Luck informing Stewart his days were numbered.

Stewart’s successor was another offensive coordinator with a flashy reputation, and though Dana Holgorsen’s first season was not without some offensive pitfalls, the Mountaineers did set all kinds of scoring records when they beat Clemson 70-33 in the Orange Bowl. That and an 8-1 record with 30 or more points plotted a promising future in the Big 12, where teams need a potent offense as much as they need a football.

Sure enough, WVU went for at least 30 points in seven of nine Big 12 games in 2012, but that was only good enough for a 4-5 conference record. In the 21 conference games since, the Mountaineers have but 13 30-point games and a 6-7 record in those contests. WVU reached 30 points in overtime of two games and in meaningless moments of two one-sided losses to Baylor.

After the most-recent lopsided defeat against the Bears on Oct. 17, Holgorsen admitted this offense wasn’t advanced enough to keep up with an offense as sophisticated as Baylor’s. Tonight’s opponent is No. 5 TCU, and the fifth-ranked Horned Frogs welcome the Mountaineers to Amon G. Carter Stadium for the 7:30 p.m. Fox Sports 1 game.

The Horned Frogs will greet West Virginia with a Big 12 offense that is second only to Baylor in scoring (50.1 points) and total offense (616.3 per game).

The Mountaineers, quite simply, have to keep pace.

“I would like to get to a point where we can,” Holgorsen said. “I’ve been involved in some games where it’s been fairly high-scoring games. We just haven’t been there yet.”

Oh, hey.  I’m open. Hit me in the post.